X builds toward a Western super app, one standalone product at a time

2026-04-17T15:14:00+00:00
New Capabilities, Status: developing

XChat's iOS launch adds encrypted messaging to a growing stack of payments, AI, and media—testing whether the WeChat playbook works outside China

Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter in October 2022, telling investors it was "an accelerant to creating X, the everything app." Three and a half years later, that app is taking shape. On April 17, 2026, X released XChat, a standalone end-to-end encrypted messaging app for iPhone and iPad—the clearest signal yet that X is serious about unbundling its platform into a suite of interconnected services modeled on China's WeChat.

XChat arrives alongside X Money, a payments service that entered beta in March 2026 with a 6% yield on deposits and a metal Visa debit card. Together they form the two pillars no Western super app has successfully built: messaging and payments. But the encryption underpinning XChat has drawn sharp criticism from cryptographers, the app launches iOS-only with no Android timeline, and every previous attempt to replicate WeChat's dominance outside China has failed. Whether X can break that pattern—with roughly 570 million monthly users as a starting base—is now the central question of Musk's post-acquisition strategy.